Steelers and Errors Send Jets’ Offense Back to Reality

PITTSBURGH — It was perhaps inevitable that the Jets, whose surprisingly easy season-opening victory over the Buffalo Bills prompted at least one player to proclaim that the Jets had put the league on notice, would eventually slip back a bit toward the competition.

On Sunday, the notice was returned to sender, with the Pittsburgh Steelers providing the reality check. The offense that had sputtered during the preseason, only to suddenly rev up against the Bills, stalled against one of the game’s most formidable defenses, generating just 219 yards in a 27-10 loss.

“We’re close on some of these plays,” quarterback Mark Sanchez said. “We stay on the field, who knows what happens? Last week, we were so good on third downs, you get a chance to run more plays. When you don’t get those opportunities, you put your defense in a bind, and it ultimately led to a loss.”

After scoring a touchdown on their opening drive — on a 14-yard pass from Sanchez to Santonio Holmes — the Jets managed only another field goal in the next 49 minutes. Even the blink-and-you’ll-miss-him third-quarter insertion of Tim Tebow for his first offensive snaps of the game provided only a brief spark.

Lined up as the quarterback with Sanchez on the sideline, Tebow ran for 22 yards. Then he handed off twice, the second time for a 6-yard loss by Shonn Greene that put the Jets in second-and-long. That was it, and Tebow was gone, Coach Rex Ryan explaining that with the Jets trying to catch up from a 10-point deficit, it was clear that they had to pass — delicately avoiding saying that the Jets do not want Tebow in that position.

It was a far cry from last week, when Sanchez played with such energy and precision, throwing for three touchdowns and completing two-thirds of his passes, that Tebow was extraneous. This time, the changeup that Tebow provides appeared vital, but he was not used.

Tebow said he did not know what the coaches’ plans were for him before the game. “I felt like we had things rolling a little bit,” he said. “It’s a game of momentum, and when you lose it, it’s hard to get it back.”

Especially against a team like the Steelers, who had not started 0-2 since 2002. Even without the injured James Harrison and Troy Polamalu, the Steelers’ defense harassed Sanchez and crowded his receivers with press coverage.

Sanchez completed just 10 passes, four of them on the first drive, and his passing yards for the game totaled 138. The Jets were just 4 for 12 on third-down conversions. No receiver caught a pass after the first quarter, until there were two receptions in the final minute, one by Holmes with 16 seconds left, long after he had missed or dropped several other passes.

In all, Holmes, the Jets’ talented but combustible receiver, was targeted 11 times but caught just three passes for 28 yards.

The Jets’ defense was frustrated by Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, who excels at extending plays. After the Steelers settled for field goals on their first two drives, they began a second-quarter drive on their 20-. Roethlisberger hit receiver Emmanuel Sanders streaking across the field. Sanders then ran for the left sideline and was hit out of bounds by Jets safety Laron Landry. The play, with the resulting penalty, was worth 32 yards, and it put the Steelers in position for a 1-yard touchdown pass to Heath Miller a few minutes later.

That was the first time the Steelers led, and, it seemed, the last time the Jets had any momentum. They were curiously conservative when they got the ball back with 1 minute 3 seconds remaining in the first half at their own 31, choosing to let the clock run out to avoid a mistake rather than run a hurry-up offense.

Photo

The Steelers’ Ryan Clark breaking up a pass to Stephen Hill. The Jets were 10 of 27 passing.Credit
Don Wright/Associated Press

The stagnation was compounded when the Jets moved backward a yard on their first drive of the third quarter. That gave the Steelers a drive that started on their own 41 and ended when Roethlisberger, on third-and-16, sidestepped a blitz and heaved a pass toward the right corner of the end zone.

Cornerback Antonio Cromartie, assigned to cover the Steelers’ top receiver, Mike Wallace, in Darrelle Revis’s absence, ran past Wallace when Wallace stopped short and — with his body sideways to be parallel to the sideline — leapt to catch the ball. Cromartie waved frantically that Wallace had stepped out, but he had not, and the 37-yard touchdown pass gave the Steelers a 20-10 lead.

“That was the killer play in the game,” Ryan said.

The Jets had plenty of chances to rally even then, but mistakes undid most of them. Returner Jeremy Kerley muffed a punt that would have given the Jets superb field position late in the third quarter. There were numerous dropped passes. And the Jets could not even take advantage of what looked to be a phantom pass-interference call against the Steelers in the fourth quarter.

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Most troubling, the Jets’ defense, the foundation upon which this season will be built, could not get the Steelers off the field when they had to. The Steelers converted on 8 of 15 third-down attempts, and Roethlisberger completed 24 of 31 passes for 275 yards and 2 touchdowns, helping them dominate the time of possession by 14 minutes. That is a deficit that the Jets’ offense is simply not explosive enough to make up for.

By the time Isaac Redman scored the Steelers’ final touchdown on a 2-yard run late in the fourth quarter, the Jets could only look across the field at the Steelers to recognize a team steeped in consistency. It is something the Jets, so accustomed to topsy-turvy seasons, have to strive for.

That may have been the most important lesson of Sunday’s awakening for the Jets. They may not be the circus that they are often portrayed as. But they are far from the juggernaut they might have thought they were. Even a steady spot somewhere in between might get the league’s attention after all this season.

EXTRA POINTS

Fullback John Conner left with a knee injury in the third quarter Sunday and did not return.

A version of this article appears in print on September 17, 2012, on Page D1 of the New York edition with the headline: Steelers and Errors Send Jets’ Offense Back to Reality. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe